High winds chased us out of Guadalupe Mountains National Park and forced us to skip a couple of days in El Paso. Instead, we jumped straight to Alamogordo near White Sands National Park.
We couldn’t get into the same state park where we had reservations two days later, but we found another campground nearby that had room for us. And as a bonus, they had sleds we could borrow for the sand dunes at White Sands.
The next day, we grabbed a couple of the saucer sleds and some hard wax, and drove over to the national park. In our minds, sledding down the dunes would be this long ride, something akin to sledding down snow-covered hills when we were kids. It didn’t really play out that way. For one, you’ve got to find a pretty steep slope to make it work, and those steep slopes generally aren’t very long.
But we found a reasonable one right next to a parking lot in the park, and gave it a go. Each ride lasted only five or six seconds, and then you had to trudge back up the steep sand to do it again. We didn’t take more than a half dozen runs before we called it quits. But it was fun to try.
The dunes at White Sands consist of gypsum. The mineral gets carried down by rain fall and snow melt from mountains down into the valley, and pools in lakes. When the lakes dry up, the gypsum forms crystals, which break off in strong winds. As the crystals tumble, they break into smaller pieces and get rounded into bits of fine sand. They form dunes in the park, which are constantly shifted by the winds, moving slowly across the landscape.
Our campground was right across the highway from Pistachioland, a working pistachio farm that boasts the world’s largest pistachio (just a sculpture, not the real thing). We had hoped to get on the last tour of the day, but by the time we arrived, it was sold out.
Instead we gorged on free samples of pistachios, trying out many of the dozen or so flavors they had on hand. Then we bought a cup of pistachio ice cream and took it back across the road to eat in our trailer.
The following day we were scheduled to move to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, in scenic Dog Canyon. But after hitching up the trailer, we decided to try Pistachioland one more time. We were able to get on the first tour of the day.
The story of how pistachio farming came to America in general and to New Mexico specifically was fascinating. Until the late 1970s, most of the pistachios sold in the U.S. came from Iran. But as the political situation there got tense, not to mention that whole hostage business, the U.S. stopped importing products from Iran. Some enterprising folk tried to meet the demand for pistachios with domestic production. They imported a bunch of trees from the Middle East, and planted them in the U.S. only to see the trees die pretty quickly.
Scientists determined that it took a specific climate for the trees to grow. They identified a swath of land from Southern California to New Mexico with the proper temperate zone. But even in that zone, the trees died.
Scientists were baffled and performed more research, ultimately discovering bacteria and microorganisms in the U.S. soil for which the pistachio trees had no natural defenses. To solve that problem, they grafted the pistachio trees onto the UCB1 root stalk, cultivated from a combination of oak and mesquite trees. That did the trick, and pistachio farming took off. You can still see how the bottom portion of the tree has a different bark then the rest of the tree.
Pistachio trees are a long term investment. They don’t start producing nuts until 8 years after they’re planted, and they don’t fully mature until age 25. They’re also pollinated by the wind, so the farmers had to plant male trees on one side of the farm, positioned so that the prevailing winds would carry their pollen to female trees.
Pistachios shells split open naturally, although about two weeks before the harvest, the farm helps the process along to minimize the amount of unopened shells you find in your bag. They boost the watering of the trees, which in turn look for ways to rid themselves of the excess moisture, including splitting open their shells.
Harvesting is done by two machines. One grips the bottom of the tree trunk and gives it a vigorous shake, while the second creates a skirt around the trunk to catch the falling nuts.
It was a fascinating tour, although we endured some cold winds on the 45-minute open cart ride. We rewarded ourselves by feasting again on the free samples in the gift shop.
We then moved to the state park, set up our trailer and headed back to White Sands. This time, we hiked some of the shorter trails in the park, and had a picnic lunch before heading back to the campground.
The following morning, I got up early to hike the Dog Canyon Trail, an 11-mile route that starts from the state park and climbs through its namesake canyon. It turned out to be a beautiful day for a hike
That afternoon, we drove up to Cloudcroft, a tiny town at an elevation of 9,000 feet in the mountains overlooking Alamogordo. We hiked a short trail just on the outskirts of town, but turned around when we hit a lot of snow. We then drove into town and had lunch at Cloudcroft Brewing Company.
Our last day in the area, I finished off our federal and state taxes, and we drove to the library to print them out and then to the post office to mail them. We had time for one last hike, so we tackled a couple of short trails within the state park.
We had planned to leave fairly early the next day as we had a long drive ahead of us, and winds were supposed to pick up in the afternoon. We packed up as much as we could the night before and settled into bed pretty early.
At 1 a.m., we were woken by a knock on the door. It was the camp host informing us that there was a fire in the canyon and we might have to evacuate the campground. Flustered by the news, we weren’t sure what to ask. We wandered outside to see the red glow of the fire coming from the canyon alongside the state park.
We spoke with a couple of other campers, who had decided to pack up and leave. We figured it was probably prudent to do the same. We got our trailer ready to move, hitched up to our truck, and planned to drive to the local WalMart parking lot to get a couple of hours of sleep.
But by the time we had finished, the glow in the canyon had faded. We walked up to where the firefighters had parked their trucks to see if we could get an update.
The camp hosts and park rangers told us the winds had died down and the crews had gotten an upper hand on the fire. They would let us know if the situation changed and if we would have to bug out.
We left the trailer hitched up to truck, the slide pulled in, ready to go at a moment’s notice, and at about 3 a.m. tried to get back to sleep. There were no additional knocks on our door that night. In the morning, we treated ourselves to breakfast at Denny’s, before leaving Alamogordo.
Days: 82
Miles Traveled: 11,063
Next stop: Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument
